1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is concerned with so-called high-ratio cake batters, and corresponding methods of formulating the same, using untreated soft or hard wheat flours in place of at least a portion of conventionally used chlorinated soft wheat flours which must normally be employed to give desirable end products. More particularly, the invention is concerned with high-ratio formulations which employ substantially untreated wheat flour, along with respective amounts of one or more selected proteins and substantially unmodified starch in order to give high-ratio cake products which are substantially the equal, in terms of organoleptic properties, of prior otherwise identical cakes made using conventional treated wheat flour.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A large proportion of commercially manufactured cakes are of the so-called high-ratio variety. This term is taken to mean a cake which has relatively high levels of sugar (and sometimes water) as compared with the quantity of flour used.
Virtually all high-ratio cakes are made with wheat flour which has been specially treated for use in high-ratio formulations. Specifically, the flour can be treated either by chlorination or heat treatment thereof, although for reasons of cost and performance chlorinated flour is by far the most prevalent product used. Treated flours allow production of high-ratio cakes having desirable organoleptic and structural properties such as crumb quality, shelf life and structural integrity. On the other hand, attempts at directly using untreated flours in high-ratio batter formulations have generally proven to be failures, inasmuch as the resultant cakes tend to collapse and are deficient in other respects.
While chlorinated flour does produce very acceptable high-ratio cakes, a problem is presented because of the possible chemical changes in flour by the action of chlorine. Specifically, many countries of the world have banned the use of chlorinated flours for reasons of public health, and this trend is likely to continue. Accordingly, there is a real need in the art for an acceptable high-ratio batter formulation which can be employed to give satisfactory end products and which partially or desirably completely eliminate the use of chlorinated wheat flour.
Another factor of considerable importance to commercial bakers stems from the fact that high-ratio cakes must generally be prepared using soft or cake flour, as opposed to hard or bread flour. Hence, a commercial bakery must maintain separate storage facilities for soft wheat flour (which is normally chlorinated) for use in cakes and the like, and for hard wheat flour which is used in bread products. As can be appreciated, a considerable savings could be realized if bakeries could have but a single supply of flour for use in all of the products it produces.
Prior work done at Kansas State University in connection with untreated wheat flour cakes is reported in a paper entitled "Chlorine Treatment of Cake Flour II. Effect of Certain Ingredients in the Cake Formula," Cereal Chemistry Abstracts, Vol. 24, No. 3, p. 108. In this paper the authors compared small, lean-formula cakes (as opposed to high-ratio cakes) using both chlorinated and untreated flours with various additives. In one series of tests (Table 4), untreated wheat flour was used in the lean formula, along with wheat starch and whole eggs. The results of this test demonstrated that an inferior quality cake was produced as compared with a companion test using exclusively chlorine treated flours. Apart from the fact that this paper describes lean-formula cakes which do not normally contain a protein source apart from the wheat flour, the authors state that when whole eggs are employed in the formula (which of course are a protein source), a deleterious effect on the baking properties of untreated flour is observed.